In and around the GreenBridge incubator, Power-Link exploits demonstration and research infrastructure such as

• a field laboratory for small wind turbines
• a micro grid

This infrastructure is at the disposal of research groups within and outside Ghent University, for services to companies and for educational purposes (e.g. master dissertations).

On the parking of the GreenBridge incubator there are some photovoltaic installations and small wind turbines, with a combined peak power of ca. 15kW.

Thanks to this variety of decentralized sources, a battery bank and the presence of three Sunny island converters a micro grid can be build. In the micro grid different charges can be included.

This way, the electrical charging points, the E-cube and the zero energy test building can be connected to the micro grid. Depending on the demand and supply of renewable sources (sun and wind), the energy is immediately used by the loads or stocked in the battery bank.

The infrastructure demonstrates the operation of a micro grid, allows to test the complementarity of different decentralized sources and offers the possibility to experiment with demand side management.

Small Wind Turbine (SWT) Field Lab

The Small Wind Turbine (SWT) Field Lab contains both measurement infrastructure and some wind turbines ‘under test’. As the name suggests, it are small wind turbines, i.e. the shaft height is limited to 15m.

The performances of the different types of wind turbines are compared based on the measured electricity production and the metrological data. During the field tests issues like sound production and generator and mast design are also investigated. The SWT Field Lab has place for ten small wind turbines.

Six turbines were bought by Ghent University for scientific research. The other four places are made available for services to companies or other research groups outside the Ghent Unviersity.

More information on the different wind turbines and the production data is available on the website of SWT Field Lab.